Story of an enthusiastic yet realistic entrepreneur.
Imagine Sarah, who after thriving consistently in the corporate world for almost a decade, decided to pursue her passion to acquaint people of her city with authentic Arabica coffee.
Sarah comes from a tier 2 city in India where consuming coffee regularly was still a foreign idea. However, Sarah was reluctant to be an entrepreneur and had always dreamt of contributing in some form to the city she grew up in.
Her optimism and background in branding & marketing drew people in numbers she couldn’t have imagined. Her thrill and happiness was off the roof when she began. But as time went on, Sarah started to face challenges: managing customer’s expectations, balancing budgets, leading her team, et cetera. Overwhelmed, she started to question herself and her capabilities.
A few weeks went by. She used all her might to stay content and motivated but still kept grappling with the circumstances showing up.
And one fine evening, she gave up!
She gave up the need to forcefully try to help herself by staying positive all the time by ignoring situations, even though they looked and felt daunting. She realized she was at a crossroads in life.
For those few days, she saw work as work; serving people coffee. Reaching the coffee shop on time, leaving on time. Engaging with the team only enough to keep things moving.
One late evening, while she was relaxing and binge watching a Korean series, she happened to open Youtube and scroll through a few videos. Out of boredom, she randomly clicks on a podcast titled ‘Limiting beliefs: Our road to failure’ by a renowned motivational speaker and she begins to watch it, with her K-drama running in the background.
3 minutes 15 seconds in, her interest starts to pique. She pauses the running episode and directs all her focus towards that video.
Still onto the video, all engrossed, she suddenly lifts her face up after 15 minutes.
With her eyes widening in amazement, she looks at the wall incredulously and tells herself:
‘How could I not realize this yet? All this while I was carrying a limiting belief unconsciously that entrepreneurship is meant to be difficult. You are meant to struggle through it a lot. Most of the entrepreneurs give up after a few months and so on….’
Excited being struck with this moment of realization, she finishes that 33 minute podcast which outlined many more concepts around how mindset stands at the epicenter of everything that we do and how crucial it is for one to carry a healthy mindset to witness healthy outcomes in their life.
While she still found herself standing at those crossroads, she sensed a slight shift in her energy this time around; as if her optimism had resurfaced a little bit. But having burned her hands last few weeks, she chose to be realistic this time.
She was sure that she will be able to cover up for the lost capital and time eventually but for that to happen, only inner strength and patience will not be enough. She has to be equipped with the right knowledge and resources too to cater to the challenges at hand and the ones waiting in queue. She knew that this time, she needed to be coached.
And without further ado, she looked for affordable but forthcoming coaches. Someone she could feel comfortable with. She proceeded with a few interactions with different coaches, before deciding to proceed with the one she felt utmost ease with.
Post completion of a few sessions, while she still continued to fight external wars, she realized her war with herself was over!
Day by day, she was choosing to see her challenges with a new perspective. She had started to feel at peace more, let go of unpleasant experiences more, and most importantly, had started to enjoy her work more.
The thoughts of ‘fight or flight’ began to disappear. She was aware something or the other would always keep occurring but with the development of this stronger understanding around why those situations occur in the first place, how her thoughts/beliefs were really shaping all that was going around her and through the right application of some techniques, she could easily steer her way towards success.
And gradually, Sarah began to thrive!
We all are Sarah(s) at least once in our lifetime, when we feel everything is crumbling down.
Choosing reality as it seems to be, doesn’t look like a possibility.
Had Sarah not decided to seek help outside of herself, she could have very easily spent a few more weeks in the abyss, finally deciding to shut her lifelong aspirations down.
It’s okay to quit. Sometimes, quitting is important!
It can open up new, more valuable opportunities that we might overlook when we are in distress. However, if you quit without understanding the role your mindset played in your previous successes and failures, you’ll remain trapped in uncertainty, constantly wondering, “What if this also doesn’t work?
And this is exactly where the need to understand ‘mindset’ steps in:
Simply put, us the human beings, unconsciously carry thousand of beliefs like ‘XYZ city is unsafe’, ‘XYZ industry is a high paying industry’, ‘People who project certain traits are good or bad people’, ‘Losing weight requires lot of effort’ and so many others that generally govern our entire life. We carry them with ourselves every single second of our lives unconsciously, without realizing that it is the real savior or culprit behind all the good and bad that happens to us.
What do mindset coaches do then?
It’s quite simple. These individuals (old or young 😉 ), have spent considerable time testing various scenarios and understanding the impact of their mindset on their lives. They scrutinize every belief they’ve unconsciously inherited from family, media, or society, and then work to change them, witnessing transformative results in their reality.
Inspired by their own experiences, they aim to share their wisdom through proven tools and techniques, enabling others to apply these methods and achieve remarkable transformations in their own lives.
As a mindset coach, my job is for you to:
- Learn how you, through the carefree usage of your thoughts and beliefs, are unknowingly attracting situations in your life. These could be experiencing ignorance by people, unpleasant experiences in relationships, slow or undesirable growth at work, dealing with overthinking or negative self talk, etc.
- How: Step 1 and 2 of my five-step approach generally help to make you aware of what you think and the beliefs that need to be changed.
- Learn how to be confident of the decisions that you make; the importance of aligning your thoughts with your emotions.
- How: To bring this alignment, step 3 of my five-step approach helps here.
- Learn to improve your self talk to attract your desired outcomes and accelerate their growth
- How: Step 4 of my five-step approach steps in here
- Experience what a constant state of blissfulness feels like. Even if you go through unpleasant times, peace and bliss do not leave your side. This is only achieved once you diligently power through the above steps. This is the last and final step, Step 5.
But I will also like to bring forth, where I will not be able to help you:
- I would not be able to scrutinize your current hardships with you. I am a firm believer of ‘not living in the past’ more than living in the present. You will have my full empathy always, but ‘OUR’ success will lie in making you the version that you desire to be and not waste time on who you used to be.
- To convince you of the idea of ‘you being the creator of your reality’. Most individuals at the beginning of the process find it difficult to accept this idea of them being the real reason behind everything that happens to them; again good or bad. I will not try to prove anything to you with words but will let you experience it yourself with a myriad of evidence that will be collected by you in the 5 weeks of this process after diligent application of suggested tools and techniques.
Before I conclude, I would like to highlight that I, as a coach, will only be able to support you through providing the right knowledge and resources. But the real work lies on your shoulders. Until and unless you do not follow the drill, you will barely scratch the surface.
And with this, my sincere wish for you, dear reader, is that just like Sarah, you too encounter your own moment of realization soon—a moment when you understand that your entire life is about to change for the better. Stay hopeful and determined. Good luck 🙂
